T-Mobile gives customers free shares in the company, people are petitioning against Windows 10 upgrades, Alexa has all the skills, Google sells Acer Chromebooks, and Minecraft in real life.

T-Mobile Customers Get Free Shares

T-Mobile is giving its customers a free stake in the company, with 10 million existing customers being offered a free share currently worth $43. These same customers can add more T-Mobile shares to their portfolio by referring new customers, with the maximum set at 100-per-year. New customers may also be eligible to receive one free share.

Once a customer (whether new or existing) receives their share, they can either retain it or sell it on. Those who hold onto them win the right to vote on various business matters by proxy. T-Mobile will not be issuing new shares to meet demand, instead buying existing shares on the open market.

T-Mobile has also launched T-Mobile Tuesdays, which offers customers free stuff via partnerships with other brands including Wendy’s Domino’s, and StubHub. It’s also giving all customers who have previously tried T-Mobile’s Wi-Fi calling feature one hour of Gogo Internet service free every time they fly.

Petitioning Against Windows 10 Upgrades

The inevitable has happened, with one brave soul standing up to the might of Microsoft. Todd Kleinpaste is petitioning the Electronics Frontier Foundation (EFF) to investigate Microsoft over the way it instituted (and is still instituting) Windows 10 upgrades.

Petitions generally don’t achieve much, because no matter how many signatures you collect, whether digitally or on a sheet of paper, they’re still just a bunch of signatures. However, this particular one could at least trigger an investigation, which wouldn’t be a bad thing.

Amazon Alexa Boasts 1,000 Skills

Alexa is Amazon’s answer to Siri and Cortana, a personal assistant able to answer questions and complete tasks. And Amazon has massively increased Alexa’s capabilities considerably since she debuted, giving her over 1,000 skills in a very short space of time.

You can now teach Alexa hundreds of new tricks, with developers adding support for Alexa to their voice-powered apps. This means Alexa now plays nicely with Uber, Domino’s, Fitbit, Capital One, and a host of others.

The Acer Chromebook 11 boasts an 11.6-inch display, a 2.16 GHz Intel Celeron dual-core processor, a 16GB SSD, 2GB of RAM, and a battery life of 9 hours. The Acer Chromebook 12 boasts a 14-inch 1080p display, a 1.6GHz Intel Celeron quad-core processor, a 32GB SSD, 4GB of RAM, and a battery life of 15 hours.

The Chromebook 11 is priced at $180, with the Chromebook 14 priced at $300. Updates adding support for Android apps will be rolled out to other compatible Chromebooks by the end of 2016.

But what if Minecraft wasn’t imaginary? What if it was real? This video shows how Minecraft might look and feel if it was our reality, with some guy forced to start mining and crafting before he’s set upon by the hostile creatures that inhabit the dark recesses. I prefer this reality, quite frankly. [H/T CNET]

Your Views on Today’s Tech News

Are free shares enough to make you switch to T-Mobile? Should Microsoft be punished for forced Windows 10 upgrades? Are you keen to try Amazon Alexa? Are you considering buying a new Chromebook? What video game would you like to play in real life?

Let us know your thoughts on the Tech News of the day by posting to the comments section below. Because a healthy discussion is always welcome.

Tech News Digest is a daily column paring the technology news of the day down into bite-sized chunks that are easy to read and perfect for sharing.